


build the words

by alto (themorninglark)



Category: Free!
Genre: Flashbacks, Haru introspection, Haru thinking about change and stuff, M/M, Non-Linear Chronology, Tokyo - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-20
Updated: 2015-06-20
Packaged: 2018-04-05 07:36:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4171413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themorninglark/pseuds/alto
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In their wandering, and the parallel lines of the roads that they walk, it is the smallest of words that connect them, and it is the smallest of words that add up in the end to <i>Haruka and Makoto</i>. Not words like <i>glory</i> or <i>winning</i>, not glittering words that spill the world at their feet, but words like <i>fish</i> and <i>saba</i> and <i>kitchen</i>, words that promise not a future that dazzles but the warmth of the hearth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	build the words

**Author's Note:**

  * For [InkWitch (serkestic)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/serkestic/gifts).



> This is for Zahra, who gave me the title as a prompt because I am uniformly awful at titling my fics. (Happy exam freedom!)
> 
> It's funny how this turned out in reverse of all my usual fics as a result: title first, then plot/mechanism, then themes. Usually it's the exact other way round ^^

_lanterns_  
_Obon  
_ _fireworks_

_love._

 

* * *

 

Haruka is an artist. This, people know. They see his drawings, and they praise him for his keen eye and cross-hatching technique; they see his swimming, and they praise him for the beautiful lines that his body makes in the water.

Makoto is an artist, and this, people do not know.

People do not know because Makoto's artistry is hidden beneath fingers that look clumsy, framed in a body that seems perpetually to hang a little askew off the wall. Like there is something about the size or shape of it that doesn't quite match the picture within. When Makoto swims, he swims like a wild thing unleashed, when he runs, he is determined and dogged, keeping a pace that leaves Haruka feeling winded some nights.

But when Makoto speaks, he makes people feel, for a time, like there are safe places in this world.

These safe places come in many forms, from the pinking sky of a sunset over the pier, to the cool blue taste of a popsicle snapped in half, to the firm grip of a hand that says, without words, _I've got you_.

And Haruka looks at Makoto one day with his artist's eye and thinks, it's not that the frame does not match him. It is that Makoto is not someone who can be framed in the first place. There will always be something that sticks out at an odd angle.

Makoto, a cup of steaming hot barley tea at his elbow, leans across Haruka's living room table with his brow furrowed and asks for help with his trigonometry, and Haruka puts down the thought for now, too preoccupied with tangents to notice when the wind catches it and swirls it away from under his nose.

 

* * *

 

It's not until years later, when he's in his kitchen in Tokyo making terrible coffee, that it floats back to him on a breeze through his window that smells like a passing spring shower.

It occurs to Haruka, then, that that is the why and the how of their belonging together, that their odd angles fit quietly alongside each other's in places they didn't even know needed fitting.

He puts down the teaspoon and picks up a fine-tipped black pen.

 _angles_ , he writes on a post-it that Makoto's stuck on his fridge with a magnet shaped like a strawberry.

 

* * *

 

 _hot_  
_sun_  
_light  
_ _candles_

_lanterns_

 

* * *

 

Makoto keeps a lot of books by his bathtub.

Haruka asks him about that, once. He finds it perplexing.

Makoto laughs, and says, "I like to read."

"In the tub?" Haruka is incredulous.

He tries to imagine this. Makoto, holding up a book very carefully, turning its pages so that it doesn't slip from his grasp and fall into the water. Makoto's toes going wrinkly while his fingers stay dry against the paper.

"Mmm. Sometimes, it's the only place where I get enough peace and quiet. You know how Ran and Ren are."

Haruka knows how Ran and Ren are.

Makoto's laugh softens into the smile he keeps only for his siblings, and Haruka, too, cannot help but smile that smile, in that instant.

He understands, he thinks. Sometimes, the tub is the only place where he gets enough peace and quiet with the water.

Makoto cherishes his books and the words within. He does not need to speak these words. There are many times he keeps his silence, waiting, watching. But it is enough, perhaps, to know that they are there for him, and that when the time comes, Makoto can pull out the exact right word for any situation.

 

* * *

 

Midway through their first semester of university, Haruka unpacks his satchel at home, and finds an unfamiliar notebook amongst its contents.

It's plain, with a brown cover. It had, in all likelihood, got mixed up in the shuffle of things at the library while they were studying and wound up in his bag without Haruka's notice. Upon closer inspection, it is slightly dog-eared and creased.

Haruka sits down on his bed. He opens the notebook.

There is a name on the inside front cover, in a handwriting that's instantly familiar, blocky, filled with purpose, firm strokes that etch not just words but a _presence_ on the page. It is a handwriting that Haruka has grown up with. He's seen it on so many other notebooks that he knows, remembers, well. He does not know this one. It is new, meant for university, inhabiting a world that crosses Haruka's own only during lunches, dinners and weekends.

He flips the page.

It's worn at the corner. Makoto's used this notebook a lot over the past two weeks, left the marks of his thumbprints on the paper.

What greets Haruka from between the lines is much as he had expected. There are notes about swimming, notes about education and the principles of childhood learning. Haruka can't quite absorb all of it at a glance; his gaze sweeps quickly over the page with a vague curiosity, thinking, _so this is what Makoto does, now_.

A rushed word scrawled in a margin, angled peculiarly, catches his eye.

_fish?_

Haruka stares at it and wonders what Makoto was thinking.

It sits beside a paragraph of bullet points bearing the rather grandiose header: _What does it mean to be a teacher?_ It sits alone, without the slightest hint of context, staring out at Haruka like an enigmatic question with no beginning or end.

_fish?_

On an impudent impulse, Haruka reaches into his bag for a pencil and writes a single word below Makoto's.

_saba._

It's really the only appropriate answer to this question, he thinks, as he dots the full stop confidently.

 

* * *

 

_sharing_

_popsicles_  
_summer  
_ _hot_

 

* * *

 

The next day, Haruka takes a leisurely morning jog over to the station near Makoto's apartment before his classes start, meets him there and hands the notebook back to him.

"Thanks for coming all the way down. I didn't even notice it was gone till you texted me," Makoto admits, sheepishly.

"You need to study more," Haruka remarks.

" _Haru_ , I was so tired last night I just fell _asleep_ …"

Haruka, thinking of the word he's left Makoto, asks if he ate dinner at the very least, and when he hears he didn't, gives him a look that makes Makoto cringe and promise ( _cross his heart_ ) to buy and scarf down an onigiri on his way to school.

 

* * *

 

_fish?_

_saba._

_kitchen ^^_

 

* * *

 

Haruka spends the entire flight from Sydney to Tokyo not sleeping.

Rin snores in his sleep. He makes little noises, small shifting movements in his seat; he is a restless sleeper, and anyway he is the sort of person who always makes any seat look like it isn't quite enough to contain him. It isn't a matter of how big the seat is, it is a matter of the fact that _Rin_ is the one being stuffed into it with a seatbelt.

Haruka, in his wakefulness, has not managed to spend the hours doing anything useful. He had watched a documentary about the ocean for a while. He had eaten the overly salty chicken and rice that they served to him on a small plastic tray, drunk his orange juice, and taken off his shoes.

He hugs his knees into his chest now as he leans against the window.

They are beginning their descent, and soon he will set foot in Tokyo, where they have reality to face, races to race. They have Nationals to compete in. For Haruka and Rin, these races are bigger than their present. These races may yet shape their futures.

For Makoto, they will not. He's built a different path for himself.

And how will Haruka put this in words, when he faces Makoto again? Will he have to? He's never needed words before, not with Makoto. Has that changed? Will it, in the years to come?

How will Makoto put this in words to him?

What word will fall first from his lips, when their eyes meet?

Haruka does not dare to imagine what it could be. He does not know what _he_ will say. He has been thinking about it, all flight long, and come away with nothing.

The plane gives a sudden, turbulent lurch. The air in the cabin seems to grow colder, icier, as they fly through a darkening cloud. Haruka draws his jacket tighter round himself. He pulls up the threadbare blanket and blows into his cupped hands. His breath is warm.

He feels his heart in his chest racing, _thump, thump_ , as the coastline of Japan comes into sight.

 

* * *

 

"Have you been cooking, Makoto?"

Makoto looks at him, eyebrows rising ever so slightly. "Why do you ask that?"

It is Sunday, and they are on a lunch excursion turned impromptu Tokyo Exploration Day. Having spent their post-lunch hours venturing into the side streets of Omotesando in search of what is, reportedly, the best coffee in Tokyo, they had found it in a hole-in-the-wall shop that looked like a wooden house with a green, stone-paved courtyard, and Makoto had left a very satisfied customer.

They're making their way back now, walking slowly down an avenue lined with zelkova trees towards Aoyama-dori where the station is. The days are growing longer.

Between the leaves on the branches, the evening sun seems to glow, golden rays tinged with green. The light makes interesting dappled patterns on the pavement.

"No reason," says Haruka. "Just checking you're not starving."

"I was thinking about it in my lecture, the other day," Makoto says, lightly. "I was thinking about fish."

Haruka shoots him a sidelong glance.

" _Saba_?" he asks.

Makoto does not like _saba_ all that much. Haruka knows this. He asks it anyway.

" _Saba_ ," says Makoto, nodding, with a wry, upward quirk of his lips and dancing eyes.

 

* * *

 

_sunset_

_secrets_

_sharing_

 

* * *

 

The first time Makoto sends him a text in Tokyo, Haruka is on the train and he nearly jumps out of his skin at the buzzing sensation in his pocket.

He thinks it is his phone ringing at first; scrambles to fish it out and notices, with some annoyance, that his notification light is flashing and it's just a text.

 _New Message  
_ _From: Tachibana Makoto_

Haruka's first instinct is to wonder why Makoto needs to tell him anything.

Haruka's second instinct answers his first, as it kicks in for him, anew, that Makoto needs to tell him things now because they will not see each other in the morning, or maybe tomorrow, or the day after.

Makoto builds his bridges with words.

 _There is a space between us now_ , thinks Haruka, _that needs a bridge._

It is a strange feeling. It is a strange thing to think.

And looking down at Makoto's _how was your day?_ , Haruka finds, to his own exasperation, he has no words, because this is not a conversation he has ever had with Makoto. This is not a question that Makoto has ever asked him. He'd never had to, before; why would he, when he'd been so keenly aware of Haruka's days that _he'd_ answer if anyone asked Haruka, "how was your day?"

Haruka feels his fingers tighten round the handhold above his head. He takes a deep breath.

He has to try, to find the words somehow, now, from within him.

 

* * *

 

It's in a lecture theatre one Friday morning that Haruka hears a crinkling as he sits down, and finds a torn piece of paper in the back pocket of his jeans.

It's small, smaller than his palm, little more than a scrap. There is a faint blue line running down its edge. There are two words on it, one in Makoto's handwriting, one in his own.

Below that, there is a new word.

Makoto is resourceful, and he's had any number of chances to sneak this paper into the pocket where Haruka's found it. This does not stop Haruka from feeling somewhat impressed, nonetheless, at his discovery, and not a little surprised.

 _kitchen_ , Makoto's written, with a happy emoji next to it.

Haruka turns the paper over. There's nothing more on the back.

It is the same margin he'd written in a week ago, on one of the pages of Makoto's plain brown university notebook. And Makoto had found it, added a word, torn it out and given it to Haruka, sliding it to him across the table like he's saying _your turn!_

 

They have their childhood games, Makoto and Haruka, and this is one they have not played in years, one that they used to play on the long bus rides of school trips.

 _sky_ , Makoto would say, suddenly, looking out of the window.

 _blue_ , Haruka would reply, with his eyes closed in a half-slumber, and listen to Makoto's voice as he calls back _water_ , answer _swimming_ without missing a beat, till their trail of words builds to a crescendo that cannot be capped or the bus arrives at their destination, whichever comes first.

Haruka's suddenly aware of a smile on his lips, and he's not sure when it got there.

 

He keeps the paper in his pocket as he goes to lunch. He has yet to write anything down.

He will not be seeing Makoto today. He hasn't made plans with Makoto for this weekend, either; the weather is growing warmer, and Makoto has a trip to the beach planned with his classmates. Haruka, as he always does, has training.

_"Will you be okay?"_

_"Mmm. Don't worry about me, Haru."_

That is all they say about it, out loud, but that is not all that Haruka hears.

What he hears is an echo of a ghost from years gone by, a ghost made substantial, and no longer frightening, by the incredible capacity of the human heart that is Makoto's; what he hears is _Haru, I have to stand on my own now_ , with a gentle release of his hand. Fingers peeling away from his wrist, one by one.

That is what Haruka hears, and Makoto knows he hears.

Haruka does not know if Makoto had slipped this torn piece of paper into his pocket before or after that conversation. Perhaps, he thinks, it doesn't matter so much. It doesn't alter their truth, merely reminds Haruka of what it really is.

In their wandering, and the parallel lines of the roads that they walk, it is the smallest of words that connect them, and it is the smallest of words that add up in the end to _Haruka and Makoto_. Not words like _glory_ or _winning_ , not glittering words that spill the world at their feet, but words like _fish_ and _saba_ and _kitchen_ , words that promise not a future that dazzles but the warmth of the hearth.

A hearth that always burns for them, no matter where in the world they are.

Haruka eats his bowl of saba donburi, thinking of Makoto, Makoto, who is not here, but who has left his words behind to keep Haruka company. And really, there's only one word that _kitchen_ can lead to, since _saba_ has already been taken.

 

* * *

 

_kitchen ^^_

_home_  
_mountain  
_ _cats_

 

* * *

 

That conversation in the light of a warm summer's day, one of many floating loose in the well-dressed, airy chatter that habitually hangs about the neighbourhood of fashionable Omotesando Hills, is the closest they ever come to talking about it.

In the end, thinks Haruka, maybe it just comes down to the fact that there's a sort of safety in the quiet nature of their exchanges, safety in the knowledge that there's still something unspoken they share, something that anchors them to what they were, even if they aren't that any more. No longer classmates, or neighbours, or teammates, just -

Just Haruka and Makoto, like they've been right from the very beginning. Back to the start, figuring things out all over again.

It doesn't take long for the tiny scrap of note paper to run out of space. When it does, Haruka substitutes a plain yellow square of a post-it that is the nearest thing he has to hand.

They keep it up for far longer than a bus ride, this time. They slip their words into pockets, into bags and between the pages of textbooks. Makoto picks a different hiding place every time, and the hiding is a game too, as much as the words themselves.

(Haruka is not as imaginative with his hiding places, and he knows Makoto always finds his faster. It's not like it's a competition, but - still.)

 

* * *

 

 _From: Tachibana Makoto  
_ _Hi Haru! How was your day?_

 _From: Haru  
_ _okay. i swam and went to class._

 _From: Tachibana Makoto  
_ _Ehhh, that's what you do every day._

 _From: Haru_  
_yeah i know.  
_ _what about yours?_

 

* * *

 

_cats_

_steps_

_sunset_

 

* * *

 

Haruka lies on his back, holding the freshly-torn scrap of paper up to the fluorescent light overhead. There it is, in Makoto's deliberate handwriting, under the word _sunset_. He'd known, perhaps, the shared memory that this would trigger for Makoto; he had not known what Makoto would write back to him.

He runs the tip of his thumb over the word, thoughtfully.

Rin comes out of the bathroom, towelling his hair. "What're you looking at?"

Haruka drops his arm, holds the note close to his chest with the warmth of his palm over his heart.

"Rin," says Haruka, "do you have secrets?"

Rin shrugs. "Who doesn't?"

He walks towards his side of the room, stops at the foot of his bed and stares with narrowed eyes.

"What the hell is this?"

"I needed to pick a pair of jammers for tomorrow's training," Haruka explains.

"They all look the same."

"They feel different."

"Then _try_ them on."

"I did."

"Then what - oh, never mind. Haru, I think the question here is, _why the fuck_ are, like, four pairs of your jammers lying on my bed?"

"Because I need to lie on my bed," says Haruka. "Yours was empty."

Rin, with a snort and an imperious gesture, sweeps all four pairs of jammers to the side in a heap and sits down on the edge of his bed, ignoring Haruka's indistinct, indignant protest.

"What's this about secrets?" he asks.

Haruka hesitates for the briefest of seconds. The space of a breath, inhale and exhale.

This is theirs alone, his and Makoto's, but this is Rin, and Rin, in his way, is _theirs_ too, as much as they are his.

Going for the half-truth, Haruka simply says: "Makoto."

" _Makoto_? Haru, can you at least make a complete sentence with your answer?"

Haruka, with an effort, tries to string together something that will satisfy Rin.

"Makoto, he… he doesn't usually have any secrets."

 _Not from me_ , he thinks, but doesn't say.

Rin snorts again, and this time it's tinged with mirth, the barest hint of a belly laugh rising from within and filling their room.

"Bullshit," Rin says. "Makoto is deeper than the Pacific Ocean."

This is not untrue. Haruka knows it.

Rin's laugh drifts away into the night, quietens down into something that lingers.

"Something up with you guys?" Rin asks.

Haruka shakes his head. "No," he says.

He pauses. "Maybe," he adds. "I don't know. But it's nothing bad."

Rin sighs. He gathers Haruka's jammers and tosses the armful at him. Haruka smells the chlorine in the air before they hit his face and chest. The light overhead becomes a small sliver in his vision, obscured by black and purple; his hand on the paper grows warmer beneath a layer of fabric.

"I know I don't get to see you both much anymore. But I'm always here, okay. If you, y'know, want to talk. Or something," says Rin.

"I know. Thanks, Rin."

"Just - sort it out, yeah? I can't always show up at your doorstep and bring you to Australia."

"You don't have to," says Haruka. "I can find my own way."

 

* * *

 

_sunset_

_secrets_

 

* * *

 

 _secrets_ , it says, in Makoto's hand.

The steps at sunset.

Makoto had told him one secret, that evening, his face half in darkness, half in the light. It had not been a secret to Haruka. He had guessed it already. But in giving it voice, it had become real, real to Makoto and Haruka, no longer a shadow to step warily around, and in becoming real, it had become something that they could face together.

He hasn't forgotten, _can't_ forget, the look on Makoto's face when he'd climbed up the steps that night, heard Haruka calling his name.

_Did you know I was coming?_

_No,_ Haruka had said.

 _Perhaps,_ he had thought, in a part of him so deep inside it had not surfaced till now.

Haruka wonders if there are more secrets than one, wonders if, together, they'll end up paving the way to their telling.

He does not have Makoto's subtlety. He puts pen to paper, and writes the first word that comes to mind, like he always does.

_sharing_

It's a pretty good word, he feels.

 

* * *

 

Once, Haruka goes a whole month without finding anything and wonders, with an odd, lonely sadness, if Makoto's forgotten, or lost, his last note.

Two days later, he finds a cat-shaped memo taped to the bottom of the instant coffee he keeps on the highest shelf of his kitchen cupboard.

Haruka rarely opens that cupboard, and never takes out the coffee unless Makoto is over. Haruka does not drink instant coffee. Makoto, against all principles of good taste, does, with generous dollops of sugar and milk.

Haruka glances over his shoulder. Makoto's disappeared round the back of the tiny second-hand TV they'd acquired together, buying it off one of Haruka's graduating teammates; and Makoto, quietely bubbling over with excitement, has brought round his old console and games and even, to Haruka's unending surprise, cushions.

"We're going to need something to sit on, right?" he points out with a laugh, like it's the most natural thing in the world.

Of course they do. Of course Haruka does not have cushions in his apartment, and of course Makoto knows this.

Haruka watches for a few seconds as Makoto fiddles with cables and connections, listens as he murmurs to himself under his breath. He can't catch what Makoto is saying. He listens, nonetheless, to the sound of his voice, it is the closest thing he has to home here in this city, and it is a sound that he misses when he does not hear it.

Haruka spoons the coffee out into Makoto's cup, and puts the bottle back into his cupboard.

He'll look at the cat-shaped memo later. With Makoto here, the words can wait, for now.

 

* * *

 

_light_

_lanterns_

 

* * *

 

When the next word shows up in his pencil case one week later and reads _popsicles_ , Haruka can't help smiling. _Should have guessed_ , he thinks.

He is struck, all at once, by a sudden craving both for popsicles and for the exact moment of Makoto splitting one in half for him, and he is struck as well by the sensation that he doesn't know whether to be annoyed or awed by Makoto's mastery of the singular word.

It's something that Makoto does, a lot.

In their childhood, Haruka had staked out a permanent claim in the territory of _annoyed_. It's a slow realisation that, perhaps, growing up, he'd _had_ to pretend to the world and himself that he was annoyed; that, had he acknowledged the extent of his awe to himself, the prickly nest of his younger heart would not have been able to bear it.

Now, Haruka isn't quite sure still that he can hold something like this in his hands without dropping and shattering it, but, at least, he can try.

 

* * *

 

The TV is old and cranky and constantly requires banging on its side to bring it to life, but Haruka is glad they bought it, and he knows Makoto is too.

It sees plenty of use through the months, into the winter. They play _Mario Kart_ way into the night till Makoto's glasses keep sliding off his nose.

Knees bumping, they fall asleep under the heat of the _kotatsu_ , which is thoroughly dangerous and possibly a fire hazard in these little shoebox-sized Tokyo apartments, but which, thankfully, causes no lasting effects besides joint headaches when they wake.

Makoto, too bleary-eyed to move, stays for breakfast; Haruka makes _tamago kake gohan_ and they both drink a lot of water because they are pink and warm and dehydrated and should have known better than to stay up till 4 am trying to outrace each other.

But they are only young university students once in their lives and surely, Haruka thinks, they're allowed to be dumb now, if ever, and with each other, if anyone.

 

* * *

 

It's only after Makoto leaves that Haruka finds the note he left for him, under a pile of video games.

 _candles_ , he had written.

 _lanterns_ , Makoto's answered.

 

Haruka plays his next word with deliberation.

So, too, he knows, will Makoto.

 

* * *

 

_lanterns_

_Obon_

 

* * *

 

 _Because we love you_ , said Makoto, and Haruka could swear, looking back, that his heart had frozen at that moment in time. Even against the explosions in the night sky, his fractured horizon and the desperation that plucked, dissonant and reckless, at the stretched, taut bowstrings of his existence, Haruka had heard the words Makoto had chosen.

And Haruka knew perfectly well that Makoto had _chosen_ them, knew that Makoto had been turning stones over in his mind for a long time now, looking, patiently, for ones that would fit in the yawning gaps that had sprung up, that would plug these holes between them. Watertight. Building that bridge, bit by bit.

 _Love_ was not a word that Makoto used often.

 _Love_ was not the sort of word that Makoto would use thoughtlessly.

Makoto's voice trembled in that moment, pitched high and raw.

 

* * *

 

_fireworks_

 

* * *

 

It all comes rushing back.

When Haruka opens the tiny square of paper, the one he'd felt in his pocket in the morning and saved, saved patiently, all day, throughout lectures and on his way home from training, when he finally locks his door behind him, takes it out and unwraps it, bit by bit, like a present -

When he sees what Makoto has given him this time, he smiles.

No longer at a loss, he has a word, now. He's had it all along.

And in the dim light of his bedside lamp, Haruka smooths out the folds in the paper, and writes down his answer.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading ♥
> 
> This started out in my head as a short, sweet, cute passing-notes story, and somehow, along the way, morphed into some massive introspection about words and the role they play in Makoto and Haru's relationship, then and now... I have no self control T__T
> 
> Some references:  
> [The sunset steps scene](http://janeypeixes.tumblr.com/post/56541067378/heres-the-second-half-of-chapter-3-if-all-goes) from High Speed!  
> Makoto having a lot of books by his tub was inspired by the [mook illustration](http://sunyshore.tumblr.com/post/120235532092/haruka-and-makoto-mook-is-here-in-all-its).


End file.
